It’s interesting that from the outside, many people see portraits and lifestyle images as easy - with the right settings and good lighting, you’re pretty much guaranteed a good shot. But there’s so much to think about when it comes to getting an absolute banger of a shot and blowing your subject away.

In this lesson, you’re going to see some behind the scenes and photos from two shoots we filmed for this course, as they apply to each concept. Then in the next lessons, you’ll get a practical behind-the-scenes of the entire shoot to see how it all plays out in real life.

Keep in mind that your model could be anyone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to hire or work with professional models, it could be anyone around you - your parents, friends, kids, colleagues, etc.

Career opportunities

High-school (Senior) photography (especially in America)
Couple photography
Kids & families photography (free-flow, unstaged shots)
Engagements, weddings, elopements
Adventure/travel photography
Fashion/event photography

Few things to consider when photographing people

Working with people changes the dynamic. You’re no longer working with static objects, you’re working with living, breathing humans so you can’t spend half an hour perfectly positioning the scene and then taking a bunch of snaps as a preparation. You need to move with it as quickly as required by the timeline, otherwise you’re just going to frustrate the person you’re photographing.
How they move and pose is going to make a big difference in the end result. So learning how to capture them in flattering angles as well as how to help them pose and get comfortable in front of the camera is going to be a big part of your job.
In some cases, your model might be terrified when having that 200mm zoom lens shoveled in their face. And honestly, the endless dark void of the lens can freak people out and when your model feels intimidated it’s not going to translate into incredible images.
Most people don’t feel naturally photogenic. They don’t know how to stand or what to do with their hands, and the more nervous they feel the more awkward your images are going to look. Even someone who’s generally confident on camera will have days where they’re just not feeling it. It’s your job as the photographer to bridge that gap and make your model feel comfortable, relaxed, and trust that you will make them look amazing.

Tackling the issues with photographing people

Have a small talk with your model and make them feel comfortable around you. Ask them about their life, their work, their traveling experiences, and actually listen to what they’re saying because you might need to dig back to those conversations before the shoot to help them relax and chill out.
On the other hand, if you look nervous and frown upon your camera and the model is getting the impression that you won’t make them look good on camera, they’re going to be even more nervous. Everything feels personal when you’re on the end of the lens, so you have to portray that confidence that you can get it and they’re going to look amazing.
Once you’re at the shoot location, talk through the plan of the shoot and explain how things will go down. If it’s somewhere close by or public, I’ll always try to scout the location before the shoot starts, especially if I’ve never been to the location before. I’ll just let them know that they just need to sit tight and get ready while I walk around the location, use the Photopills app, switch between lenses and make a bit of a game plan. That way you don’t have to keep stopping to rethink your angles and constantly moving your models when you’re shooting as it can break the flow and leave the model feeling uneasy. There will be a little hiccup coming up from time to time, and when that happens, make a joke out of it in a way that the whole shoot becomes such a fun experience for everyone.
Sometimes, the more direction you give to people, the more awkward they feel. So you don’t want to overdo it.
When you capture a shot that you think is amazing, show it to your model. It helps them to know that what you guys are doing is working. I found that people can be stiff at the first few minutes, but as soon as they see the photo and they think it looks amazing, they’re suddenly over the moon and enjoying themselves.
If you’re going for a more carefree, caught-in-the-moment vibe then you’re not going to have to provide the same level of detail in your posing as when you’re trying to get more editorial style of shots.
The location and the distance from the subject are going to make a big difference as to how you tackle the communication. Let’s say you’re shooting with a 200mm lens in a crowded area, so not only is your subject going to be far away but it will also sound rude if you’re yelling across the crowded space. In this case, it’s a good idea to run through some possible poses before you hit the spot, especially if you’re working in an adventure/travel shoot. If it’s really hard to communicate with your model, then you’re going to rely on some good old charades and hand signals.
Be ready to pivot your approach if it’s just not working. We had a client who’s only been taking photos with filters on her phone for years, and when she was looking at a full-resolution camera showing her skin and her body, she started to become nervous and couldn’t overcome her insecurities even though the instructions were all simple and short. So we had to change our approach, and instead of asking her to look at the lens Tina would talk to her about all kinds of things while Emilio is capturing her from different angles from a distance. We also moved from the bright area we were shooting into a more shadowy area with softer light that’s more forgiving. It changed the whole plan but more importantly, she was a happy client at the end of the day.

Preparing for the shoot

Talk with your client about what their goals are for the shoot. Is it for professional headshots? Fun images? Social media assets? Personal branding? Family memories? You can get in touch with them about this either via email, messages or a phone call.
You want to also ask them how they feel about the shoot. Are they nervous? Excited? Are they someone that’s shy in front of the camera? And whether there are particular angles that they would love to shoot.
When it comes to inspiration photos, you want to be a little bit careful here because sometimes the inspiration that the client gives you can be out of this world and there’s no way you could replicate that with the budget they have. It’s good to know that’s what their expectations are, but then you’d want to gently guide them back to reality. You’d also want to match their expectation with the portfolio that you have and look at the photos they’ve taken themselves to gauge their confidence on the camera.
When you’re getting feedback from the client, try to honestly reflect on whether there was something you could’ve done differently in the shoot and also remember that how they feel about the images doesn’t determine your worth as a photographer. You need to separate the feedback with the ways you could improve and never see a customer’s dissatisfaction as being an effective evaluation of your skill and talent as a photographer.

Technical tips

Location & lighting

Location and lighting are two of the most important elements when it comes to shooting lifestyle and portraits. It goes hand-in-hand with each other - the lighting plays a strong role in our location choice, whereas the location choice impacts the lighting.
Having said that, when it comes to traditional close-up portraits, the location is not as important as the lighting. You can take close-up portraits in a well-lit bathroom and still get a stunning shot. My only advice for shooting shots like this is to make sure that it’s not too busy behind your subject, or use a very shallow depth of field to blur everything out.
And if you’re first starting out, try to shoot at the golden hour if you can, especially if you’re working with someone who’s not 100% confident in front of a camera or wants to minimize wrinkles with a soft and warm glow on their skin.
If you want to dive into working with hard light which is obviously harder and most of the time requires assistance, you can partner up with other first-time photographers and offer each other assistance on your first couple of shots. You’ll get more experience watching and learning from each other and you’ll have someone else holding up your gear and reflector with no extra cost.
On other hand, working with hard light means the model would be facing the sun and looking into the light, sometimes for an extended period of time, which is something that trained professional models can only do. If you’re working with inexperienced ones, make sure to make them comfortable and not squinting their eyes.
The way I like to approach it is to first think about the concept of the shoot, then some possible locations, and finally the light. Generally if you have to choose between epic location and great lighting, choose the latter as you can always fake the background a little bit.
Always be prepared to pivot on the spot since there are elements that are just beyond our control - i.e. the weather, and always communicate with the client regarding the situation and tell them with good intention of what’s going to happen if they decide to go on, move to other locations, or choose to reschedule.

Lenses, depth of field and focusing

The standard measurements are based on the full-frame sensor. If you’re working with a crop sensor, then you multiply the lens’ focal length by the crop factor which is usually by 1.6x. So 50mm on a crop sensor is roughly equivalent to 80mm on a full-frame camera. But if a lens is already made for crop sensor cameras, nominally the focal length (i.e. 50mm) will still be based on the full-frame camera. It’s really confusing, but they just try to make it so that everything is based on the universal standard of a full frame.
Traditionally speaking, close-up portraits are shot with lenses around 50m to 80mm. And the reason for this is that anything generally under 50mm gives a little bit of distortion to the face, while anything above 80mm tends to flatten the face and you start to lose a little bit of visual interest.
That said, this is very much a generalization and using focal lengths outside this range is totally fine. What’s more important is thinking about the intention or the end result that you want. If you are shooting someone’s kicking their foot out as a really cool effect, then you just intentionally use a lens with a wider angle for the purpose of making their foot really stand out and giving that dramatic and dominating feel.
You can create a shallow depth of field and really compress the image with a longer lens, drawing a distinct background closer to the subject. For example, if you’re shooting on a 200mm lens for a subject standing in front of a mountain, that can make the mountain feel like it’s kind of towering over the subject.
As for the aperture, let’s look back at how focal length and your distance away from the model impacts that depth of field. Let’s say you shoot at f2.8 on a 35mm lens, and then you shoot at the same aperture on a 100mm lens. The result is you’ll get a shallower depth of field with the 100mm lens than the 35mm one.
Getting closer and further away also impacts that depth of field. So if you take the 35mm lens at f2.8 and stand three meters away from your model, you will have a depth of field of area that’s in focus of around 1.3 meters directly before and after your model. But if you were to stand eight meters away from your model with exactly the same settings, that would increase your depth of field to 12 meters. So the further you go away, the bigger the area that’s in focus will become, despite having the same lens and the same F stop number.
The depth of field is actually one of the most important parts of telling a story. A very good photographer would think about the distances (i.e. “I want exactly from her nose to exactly this point in her ear to be in focus and nothing else after it”) and really wrap their head around it until it becomes nuances when you start to really look at the field.
When you’re shooting a portrait, think about how much of the image you want to be in focus and how much you want to be blurry. You often want to separate your subject from the background, but not so much that only their nose then focuses and the rest of their face is blurry. And sometimes even having the whole background blurry can be a cool effect, but it can be overused. So you don’t want to rely on that every single time.
If you’re using gear that you aren’t totally comfortable with yet, just plug it all into the Photopills app and make some notes for yourself. That way you can figure out how much of it will be in focus if your subject is standing X meters away with an X mm lens and a background that’s X meters far away.
When it comes to more lifestyle or portrait shots, you show more of the model’s surroundings and you don’t always want to blur it out completely. Otherwise, you start to kind of lose sense of where they are and what they’re doing. Let’s say you’re taking a lifestyle shot in front of the Eiffel Tower, you want to blur it enough that it separates them from the background so as not to make it look a bit busy, but you don’t want to blur it too much that the Eiffel Tower just looks like a blurry gray construction site behind your model.
When choosing our aperture, you need to take into account the element of light. The smaller the F stop, the shallower the depth of field and the brighter the image. On the other hand, the bigger the F stop, the deeper the depth of field (more in focus), and the darker the image. So if you’re in an environment which is pretty dark, then you’re going to want to decrease your aperture and make it a smaller number to allow in more light. However, if you drop it too much like we talked about, then you might not have enough depth of field that you want. In this case you can either slow down your shutter so long as you don’t go over that two times focal length rule, or if you can’t do that, then increase your ISO.
Another aspect to keep in mind is that most lenses have a sweet spot for optimal sharpness as far as the F stop goes. And when shooting close up portraits, we are generally looking for those tack sharp images. A quick Google search for your particular lens will often give you the details for that.

Other tips and tricks

Always expose the face when it comes to portraits. This is a generalized rule, but it is important that you are exposing for the face and not for the background. Let’s say that the mountain behind the model looks amazing, but then the model is completely dark. And you can’t see any sort of features because you’ve exposed that background, but not your subject, which is literally the most important part when it comes to a portrait.
There will be areas where you do have a lot of high dynamic range - spots where there’s very dark areas and very bright areas, and there are times when you’re just gonna have to sacrifice those bright areas for the good of having a well lit subject. As a general rule, remember that it’s easier to brighten a darker image up than it is to tone down highlights that have been blown out. So if you’re working in a space where you have to make that sacrifice, you can underexpose the face a little but don’t go too far.
When it comes to shooting portraits, especially very close up ones, you want the eyes to be in focus. There is also a generalized rule that the closest eye should be the one that’s in focus. Now, we can do this very effectively using single-point AF by moving that focus point and lock it on to the eye and then take the photo. If your camera doesn’t have single point autofocus, then you need to make sure that the eyes are in focus by taking a few more shots to get there. But don’t mistake this with the tracking autofocus, I’m just saying you should be using the single one and placing it over the eye rather than using a group of autofocus points.
As for the composition tricks, the most common ones you’ll use is a rule of thirds, both in terms of where you’re positioning the model and in terms of how you’re positioning the background around them. You can have the model off to one side a little bit where those two thirds meet each other, and then put that intersecting point over the eye. But if the model moved a little bit, you would use the eye closest to the camera on that intersecting point. On the other hand, when it comes to straight-on shots, then putting the third line so that the eyes sit on one of the third lines is going to help a lot. And then you can also follow the symmetry rule and make sure that they’re in the center between the two thirds.
You want to generally avoid having the horizon or other distracting backgrounds cutting straight through the subject’s head, even if it’s behind it as it can look distracting and make their head look like it’s floating or kind of chopped off. The other mistake you want to avoid is putting the horizon on the top of someone’s head. Let’s say your subject is standing in front of the ocean, and the horizon just touches the tip of their like the crown of their head which looks just weird.
When it comes to the final crop there’s some common rules that we actually cover in that lesson. For example, you never want to corrupt the chin. And it typically looks awkward if you crop right on the joints. My tip is if you’re just starting out, rather than overthink it, I would just compose the shot and then take a step back so that you have extra room to work with when you’re making the final crop.
The foreground can also be useful especially when we’re shooting lifestyle shots as it can help give us that storytelling element to it and tell where the model is. But you need to make sure that it’s not distracting with too much foreground in focus, or the subject is going to get completely lost.
Shooting at different angles can totally change the feeling of the image. And it might be a case of getting yourself higher by standing on a ladder or the second story of a building and shooting from above, or simply holding your camera a little higher or lower than the model.
Generally by shooting up at our model, it makes them appear bigger, stronger, prouder and taller. On the other hand, I often find that shooting down on someone - male or female - it makes them look small and insignificant. But one of the downsides of shooting off at somebody is that you’re looking straight up their nose which sometimes can be a little bit unflattering when it comes to portraits. So you just really need to think about what you want to portray and how you want to angle the shot. Sometimes looking down at somebody is going to help what you want to portray (i.e. innocence) and sometimes just a small shift can change the perspective. Honestly, I would say just experiment with it, and don’t be afraid to crouch down on the ground or stand a few stairs above your model and see what you get.

That’s a wrap, if you have any specific questions about shooting people, please let us know. Otherwise, just get out there and have fun. Good luck guys!

7 day photography challenge challenge

day 6 - tips for photographing people